1 INTRODUCTION

Imagine a global community of people who—as a matter of daily routine—observe wildlife, smell the air, discuss the weather and touch the world around them. As sensors, people have evolved the ability to assess environmental change and one might easily conceive an army of such ‘citizen scientists’ ready and willing to advance knowledge. Of course, it is not that straightforward. Although volunteers have supported science for decades, the concept of citizen science that has a more holistic consideration of methods, ethics, philosophy and social science is relatively new. We know citizen science can generate large, high‐quality datasets, but as much as this volume of observations demonstrates the potential of citizen science, there are new challenges and opportunities, such as reconnecting people with nature. No matter the discipline, how best to incorporate citizen science into research in an efficient, cost‐effective and ethical way that works for both contributing citizen, and professional scientist is still to be fully understood. Indeed, from the perspective of the social sciences, there is the need for citizen science to adapt to a society that demands science to be responsive to rapidly changing concerns.

The Oxford English Dictionary defined citizen science in 2014 (OED, 2020), and combined two early definitions that emphasised (a) the responsibility of science to society (Irwin, 1995) and (b) the participatory role of people contributing observations or efforts to scientific endeavours (Bonney, 1996). More recently, Ceccaroni et al. (2017) attempted to reconcile these viewpoints to describe citizen science as work undertaken by civic educators and scientists together with citizen communities to advance science, foster a broad scientific mentality, and/or encourage democratic engagement, which allows society to deal rationally with complex modern problems (Eitzel et al., 2017). As of 12th December 2020, the citizen science hub SciStarter.com lists 1,358 active citizen science projects. Of these, 642 (47.3%) are listed under the topic ‘Ecology and Environment’. Indeed, there has been a rapid growth in such projects since the 1940s, and since 1990 there has been a 10% decadal increase (Pocock et al., 2017). This expansion in citizen science has precipitated a range of supporting infrastructure, including typologies (e.g. Danielsen et al., 2009; Wiggins & Crowston, 2011), best practice principles (e.g. ECSA, 2017) and frameworks for implementation (Chase & Levine, 2016; Resnik et al., 2015; Shirk et al., 2012).

It is because of the growth in citizen science activities across the breadth of ecology and environmental studies, and increasing attention in the social sciences, that the BES launched an open call for papers to this Special Feature on citizen science across six of the BES journals in October 2019. In this Editorial, we discuss the papers and topics covered and conclude with a brief outlook on ongoing and future developments.

中文翻译：

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走向所有人的生态科学

1引言

想象一下一个全球人组成的社区，他们每天都观察野生动植物，闻空气，讨论天气并触摸周围的世界。作为传感器，人们已经进化出了评估环境变化的能力，并且人们很容易构想一支由这样的“公民科学家”组成的队伍，他们随时准备并且愿意增进知识。当然，这不是那么简单。尽管志愿者数十年来一直支持科学，但是公民科学的概念相对更全面地考虑了方法，伦理学，哲学和社会科学，这是一个相对较新的概念。我们知道，公民科学可以生成大量高质量的数据集，但是，尽管这一数量的观察证明了公民科学的潜力，但也存在新的挑战和机遇，例如使人与自然重新联系。不管纪律 如何最好地将公民科学以一种有效，具有成本效益和道德的方式纳入研究中，从而对公民贡献者和专业科学家都起作用。确实，从社会科学的角度来看，公民科学需要适应一个要求科学对快速变化的关注做出响应的社会。

《牛津英语词典》在2014年对公民科学进行了定义（OED，  2020年），并结合了两个早期的定义，这些定义强调（a）科学对社会的责任（Irwin，  1995年）和（b）做出贡献的人们的观察性作用或努力科学努力（邦尼，  1996年）。最近，Ceccaroni等。（2017）试图调和这些观点，将公民科学描述为公民教育者和科学家与公民社区一起为促进科学发展，培养广泛的科学心态和/或鼓励民主参与而开展的工作，这使社会能够合理地处理复杂的现代社会。问题（Eitzel等人，  2017）。截至2020年12月12日，公民科学中心SciStarter.com列出了1,358个活跃的公民科学项目。其中642（47.3％）个在“生态与环境”主题下列出。实际上，自1940年代以来，此类项目一直在快速增长，而自1990年以来，十年间增长了10％（Pocock et al。，  2017）。公民科学的这种扩展催生了一系列支持基础设施，包括类型（例如Danielsen等，  2009； Wiggins＆Crowston，  2011），最佳实践原则（例如ECSA，  2017）和实施框架（Chase＆Levine，  2016） ; Resnik等，  2015 ; Shirk等，  2012）。

由于整个生态学和环境研究领域公民科学活动的增长以及社会科学领域的关注度不断提高，BES公开征集了BES六种期刊中有关公民科学的专题报道的论文。 2019年10月。在本社论中，我们讨论了所涵盖的论文和主题，并对当前和未来的发展作了简要展望。